On the edge of Southampton, 6,000 people were living in the Townhill Park, Midanbury and Harefield estates when SO18 Big Local was formed. Kim Ayling, the partnership’s chair, shares how she became involved in some of the area’s innovative initiatives, from free packed lunches for children, to holding the council accountable for housing development.
Kim Ayling is a tireless enabler and connector. She’s been involved in launching numerous initiatives that have positively impacted the 6,000 people living in the Townhill Park, Midanbury and Harefield estates on the edge of Southampton.
In her role as volunteer chair of SO18 Big Local, over the last five years Kim has given 15 to 20 hours of her own time each week, actively seeking to understand the needs within her community and finding ways of addressing them.
Q: How would you describe the Harefield, Midanbury and Townhill Park area of Southampton where you live?
Kim: They’re neighbourhoods located on the east side of Southampton. I would say Townhill Park, Harefield and parts of Midanbury are almost ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods. They’re mainly social housing and old council estates built back in the late fifties and sixties.
There are very few places to meet, very few businesses. On my estate, Townhill Park, we do not have a pub, we do not have a doctor, we do not have a dentist. We have one shop.
Q: When did you get involved in Big Local?
Kim: It was around 2014. All the social housing here is owned by Southampton City Council. In 2011 or 2012, the council announced this big grand regeneration plan for Townhill Park. They were going to demolish 450 homes but build 675, making it a fabulous community-based neighbourhood that families would love to live in.
To date, of the 675 promised homes, 56 have been built. It’s been dragging on for ten years. There was a small residents’ group that was active in Townhill Park. They had a meeting so I went along. There were a couple of people there that were involved in SO18 Big Local, which was just being set up. By 2015 I was a member of the committee, then I became chair in 2017.
Q: Where has your work with SO18 Big Local taken you?
Kim: We have built up such good relationships with our officers and local councillors. As SO18 Big Local, we act as their critical friend, pointing out, questioning, using our influence and using our voice in the local community to tell them what we think they need to hear, whether it’s good news or bad news.
We’re in with the schools. We have just gone into partnership with City Mission and City Life Church, which are both faith organisations and charities, to open up a marketplace pantry in Townhill Park. It’s not a food bank, it’s a pantry where you pay a subscription every week and then you get £15, £20 or £25 worth of groceries depending on what’s in.
We have some really brilliant procured services, like SARC, which is Southampton Advisory and Representation Charity, which helps people with employment law and benefits. They have recouped hundreds of thousands of pounds for our residents.
One of our other procured services is Southampton Childplay Association, which is funded to do pop-up play in various parts of Southampton. We are the jigsaw, putting the pieces together. We are the ones that have those conversations and put people in touch with who they need to speak to. We are the conduit.
Q: What are you proudest of?
Kim: I’d say our ‘Bag A Lunch’ scheme. We started it in 2018. It doesn’t matter whether they get free school meals during term time, anybody who is registered for one of our play sessions can have a free packed lunch. We couldn’t do it during the pandemic, but I think we’ve given out about 1,500 packed lunches over the last three or four years.
Q: How have you sought to bring people together?
Kim: We have a community hub up in Harefield in an old council shop. We have various things going on up there. We run NVR, which used to be called Nnonviolent Rresistance. It’s now called A New Vision on Relationships.
That started back in 2016 when I was already involved in SO18 Big Local. My daughter and I were going through a very, very dark time. We were in a right mess and it was suggested that I did an NVR course. It’s a ten-week course and it helps to repair challenging behaviours of children, and how a parent or guardian can start to repair that relationship.
It was absolutely life changing for me and for my daughter. When I became chair of SO18, I said this is what we should be doing here in Harefield and Townhill Park and Midanbury. We must have had between 80 and 100 families doing the ten-week course.
Q: What made you want to get involved?
Kim: I like to know what is going on. No one from the council was talking. You had this black hole of lack of information. All the residents were being done to, they had no involvement in what was going on. SO18 just came along at the right time. I’d never done anything like that before.
In 2015, SO18 set up the Townhill Park Regeneration Forum, which is myself, Barbara Hancock and Jo Procter. Jo is our worker [a paid individual who supports the delivery of Big Local]. Barbara is a fabulous community development worker who was working with us from the very beginning.
Q: Have you ever stepped back and thought about why you do this?
Kim: Oh yes, all the time! I think it’s because my brain is wired that way. If you talk to others who do the same, they will say something similar. We have this compulsion to be involved, to make connections. One of our themes in SO18 is ‘a better place to live’, whether it’s your physical surroundings or your environment. Others are ‘we can’, which is helping people, and ‘helping hand’, which is training.
Big Local was started for resident groups to make their neighbourhoods a better place to live. It’s as simple as that. It really is as simple as that.
Q: In your nearly ten years with SO18, what are the most profound changes that Big Local has brought about in your community?
Kim: I think that we’ve given people a voice. If they haven’t wanted to talk about something themselves, we have enabled them or we have assisted them. We’ve put Townhill Park and Harefield on the map a little bit.
We hold the local councillors to account for sure, and we enable people to know what to do about a problem. If they can’t do it themselves, they can come to us and we will help them. We won’t do it for them but we will point people in the right direction. We want to show people that they’re not on their own.
